Serra book in top 25 academic books for 2015

Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (in the series Before Gold: California Under Spain and Mexico) has been selected in Choice Reviews Online Top 25 Academic Books of 2015! The book has gotten a lot of press this year, as it played a pivotal role in the canonization of Serra by Pope Francis last year. In fact, the authors, Rose Marie Beebe and Robert Senkewicz (twofrequentcollaborators), were flown to the Vatican and the book was added to the archives there!

I am the designer on this series and this volume is a beauty: 7×10 with lots of color images.

Here are some pages from a book in the same series, Californio Portraits: Baja California’s Vanishing Culture, by Harry W. Crosby. The photos in this book were taken in the late 1960s, and we decided to encourage that feel by leaving the images without a keyline and with the curved corners and rough film edges.

At the Western History Association conference in Portland in October, I met up with Rose Marie and Bob and learned about their upcoming volume on Vallejo. It will be a very special addition to the series—not surprising given the ambitious authors, who are driven to do the very best!